All this poll shows is that a large percentage of people don't listen to the questions they are asked. That's a basic problem of streets surveys. You basically ambush people with a set of questions when they are occupied with a thousand other things.

Stuff like "What is George W. Bush's first name?" or "How long does it take the Earth to travel around the sun?" always gets weird answers.

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I am not shocked so much by the survey's results but by the fact that my own best friend did not know. It was not a matter of how the question was asked. We discussed it for a couple of minutes and she definitely had no idea what a year was nor did she understand that the Earth rotated once each day.

My younger daughter is currently working in insurance, where part of her job is sending letters to policyholders. Her boss goes over her e-mails before they go out, and my daughter constantly gets her e-mails corrected. The boss told her the average American reads at a 6th grade level, and that she has to dumb down the e-mails, otherwise she may offend the reader by making them feel stupid.

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To be fair, this is actually good advise in an industry that deals with people. It's one thing to know lots of words, it's another to assume everyone else does. When it comes to business communications, it's smarter to be simpler. This is a problem many bad trial lawyers have. The good ones speak simply, the bad ones speak complicatedly.

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By the same token, it's much harder to write with nuance in a way that's accessible to the broader public than it is to simply type everything you know about a topic. For me at least. I know I put more work into a 3,000-word magazine piece for the general public than a 10,000-word peer-reviewed article.

All this poll shows is that a large percentage of people don't listen to the questions they are asked. That's a basic problem of streets surveys. You basically ambush people with a set of questions when they are occupied with a thousand other things.

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Aaaw, stop making excuses for them. Let's face it, a lot of people are just plain DUMB.

It's depressing, not only how low standards are in society, but how disinterested people are in the world around them. How can we improve the educational system when people are so apathetic about learning?

Something I need to work on is how easily I am irritated by stupidity. People have told me I would make a great teacher, but I know that I would not, because when someone doesn't apply themselves or doesn't care to learn the material I just get pissed and want no further contact with them.

Unless you have true mental deficiencies or learning disorders, there is no excuse for stupidity. It is lazy and annoying. I can understand having a bad memory; I love history and studied it for years but I can't remember dates and details hardly at all. But you should have the intellectual know-how and curiosity to find those details when you come across something you can't remember. And when you come across something you don't know or understand, research it. I'm not saying everyone needs to be perfect and know everything, but they have to at least show some care for learning.

I remember we had the giant "How Things Work" book when I was child, I loved reading through that thing.

Stupid people really piss me off. I guess this is why I have no friends.

^^ You just need friends with the same spark of curiosity and interest in life that you have. That's one of the great things about the Internet-- you can meet people like that. When I was a kid, my family and friends bored me to tears. When I went to work in health care, things were somewhat better because I was surrounded by medical professionals, but they were still mostly very specialized and seldom well-rounded. I didn't start meeting really interesting people until I went online.

It takes no more interest in science to know why a year is an year than is needed to tell the time. It is like no-one needs to have an interest in geography to know the name of the continents. These are basic facts that everyone of average intelligence should know.

I asked my friend "why do we have a leap day every 4 years?" She said it was something to do with the Olympic Games.

LOL, besides 2100 won't be a leap year because it's not divisble by 400. Something to do with that due to the fact that Earth's orbit takes slightly less than 365.25 over the course of four centuries adding a leap day once every four years accumulates an error adds up to around 3 days.

LOL, besides 2100 won't be a leap year because it's not divisible by 400. Something to do with that due to the fact that Earth's orbit takes slightly less than 365.25 over the course of four centuries adding a leap day once every four years accumulates an error adds up to around 3 days.

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Which resulted in the calendar being 10 days ahead of the equinoxes by 1582, hence the switch to the Gregorian calendar.

kinda cool that we were lucky enough to get born in time to witness the only century leap year for the next 400 years, plus a change of milennium all in one go

Spot's Meow, a prof at my old University told us: you don't have to remember all the facts, but it's vital to remember where to look them up. - A really good advice.

I loathe mistakes. Particularly in books. The noble custom of proof reading appears to have been abolished during recent years. Much to my family's exhilaration I am in the habit of whoiting out all printing and translation errors and correcting them with a super-fine pen.
It has a very practical reason, though: I am a very fast reader and when there is an error I kinda stumble and it takes me a few seconds to get back to speed again. A corrected text can be read fluently and quickly next time.

^^ LOL no need to appologize, TT I could have sworn I caught every typo. Blame it on the heat wave - my brain is sizzling.

I injured a tendeon in my right forefinger years ago and can't fully stretch the finger anymore so that I have a tendency to either hit two keys at the same time or to have my left hand overtake my right one, resulting in the letters swapping places: liek thsi.

As for Murphy - I've been trapped in a Murphyonic Field for the last 22 months. Short of pregnancy I think I have fallen a victim to pretty much every surprise life has to offer.

^^ LOL no need to appologize, TT I could have sworn I caught every typo. Blame it on the heat wave - my brain is sizzling.

I injured a tendeon in my right forefinger years ago and can't fully stretch the finger anymore so that I have a tendency to either hit two keys at the same time or to have my left hand overtake my right one, resulting in the letters swapping places: liek thsi.

As for Murphy - I've been trapped in a Murphyonic Field for the last 22 months. Short of pregnancy I think I have fallen a victim to pretty much every surprise life has to offer.

I got into an argument with a friend once when he insisted that Mexico was part of Central America. I tried to tell him that it was part of North America but he wouldn't believe me. According to him since Mexico was a Latin American country then it could not be part of North America.